The effect of using story telling on the vocabulary achievement of young learners

Vocabulary is one of the important language components in learning English because it is needed very much in the effort of understanding and knowing names for things, actions, and concepts. A learner can understand what others say (listening skill), can understand the written words (reading skill), can express his ideas well both orally (speaking skill), and in written form (writing skill) by mastering vocabulary. Some experts say that story telling can be used for teaching English especially teaching vocabulary. This technique can help the teacher to avoid boring situation during the teaching-learning activities, and can increase the students' motivation in learning vocabulary. Because motivation plays an important role for the success of teaching learning activities, the writer was interested in conducting a study on teaching vocabulary using story telling to young learners (in this case elementary school students). The writer chose story telling because it encourages and increases the students' motivation in learning process. This experimental study was conducted to measure the effect of using story telling as a technique in teaching English on the vocabulary achievement. The population of this study were the fourth grade students of SDK Maria Fatima III Jember of the academic 2000-2001. The sample consisting of three classes (IVA, IVB, and IVC), were not randomized but they were selected as they were. Out of the three classes, two classes (IVA and IVB) were determined to be the experimental group and control group, respectively, whereas class IVC was selected to be the try-out group. Then, the experimental and control groups were given different treatments. The experimental group was taught using story telling, while the control group was taught using word lists. These treatments were given three times before the writer conducted her real post-test to both of the groups. To analyze the results of the treatments and the post-test of the two groups, the writer used t-test to test the hypothesis of the study whether the null hypothesis is accepted or rejected. The null hypothesis of this study was: there was no significant difference in students' achievement taught using story telling and those taught using word lists. While the alternative hypothesis of this study was: there was a significant difference in students' achievement taught using story telling and those taught using word lists. The statistical calculation indicated that the students taught using story telling (4A) got higher scores than those taught using word lists (4B). The mean score of the experimental group (4A) was 86.53. While the mean score of the control group (4B) was 81.6. The t-observed value of the post-test (to) was 1.7036 and t-table was 1.671. Since the t-observed (to) was higher than t-table (tt), so the writer concluded that the null hypothesis (Ho) was rejected and the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted. It means that there is a significant difference between the vocabulary achievement of the students taught using story telling and those taught using word lists. In other words, those taught using story telling had a better mastery of vocabulary rather those taught using word lists